Original｜Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author: Wenser ( @wenser 2010 )
After Trump announced the promotion of the crypto strategic reserve plan, the market rebounded strongly in a V-shaped reversal. In addition to the highly anticipated SOL and XRP, there is also a dark horse in this cycle that has performed low-key but strong - ADA (Cardano).
Why is ADA listed on Trumps favored list along with SOL and XRP? What is the inside story behind the surge in ADAs price? What do market participants think of ADA? Odaily Planet Daily will make an experimental analysis of the above questions in this article for readers reference . Recommended reading: V-shaped reversal in the crypto market: Trump effect shows its power again, supporting XRP, SOL, and ADA to become the core of reserves
ADA (Cardano)’s core technology: A connection with the government
Interestingly, this is not the first time that ADA’s price has skyrocketed due to positive news related to Trump.
Last November, after Trump was successfully elected as the US President, foreign media reported that Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson had confirmed plans to work with the US government under Trump to help develop cryptocurrency legislation to create a clear regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency industry.
Charles Hoskinson announced these plans in a recent speech, saying that the development of positive policies regarding cryptocurrencies requires support from both Democrats and Republicans. He also said that his company Input Output Global (IOG) will set up a separate policy department for cryptocurrency regulation. The office will focus on developing a legislative framework that incorporates the provisions of the 21st Century Financial Innovation and Technology Act (FIT21) and the Responsible Financial Innovation Act (RFIA). Finally, he added: I will work with legislators and the government to push for a bipartisan bill to be passed.
Affected by the rumors of joining the Trump administration, the price of ADA once rose by more than 30% , approaching the high price of $0.597 in April 2024. Later, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson also revealed the core technology of ADA for the first time in an external conversation . He said frankly: You know, I have a deep friendship with a manager in the Trump transition team. (Note: Building relationships is also a hard technology that has been tried and tested in China and abroad)
Charles Hoskinson reveals his network of connections
This hype seems more like an advance rehearsal and warm-up for the future surge in ADA.
In early January this year, ADA surged above $1. At that time, analysts detected that whales had hoarded about 100 million tokens in a short period of time. In March, ADA soared from around $0.66 to nearly $1.2, nearly doubling. All of this is naturally inseparable from the project founder, Charles Hoskinson.
The founder behind ADA refuses to be called the “co-founder of Ethereum”
The Cardano project is one of the first Ethereum killers, and its founder Charles Hoskinson is better known as the co-founder of Ethereum.
At the end of 2013 , Charles Hoskinson read the Ethereum White Paper written by Vitalik Buterin after being introduced by Bitcoin enthusiast Anthony Di Iorio. Later, due to questions about some of the content in the white paper, Hoskinson took this opportunity to get acquainted with Anthony Di Iorio and Vitalik through an early meeting. Ethereum was just starting out at the time, and he revealed : At that time, there were only four people in the meeting, and I was the fifth person.
Later, Hoskinson participated in the design of Ethereums ICO and served as CEO for a short period of time due to the need to register the Ethereum Foundation in Switzerland. Later, affected by the major disagreement on whether Ethereum should be operated as a non-profit organization, Hoskinson supported the use of a for-profit approach and finally officially withdrew from the Ethereum ecosystem in June 2015 (some say he was fired by Ethereum officials). Perhaps the experience in the Ethereum ecosystem was not pleasant. In 2020, after an interview with the media, Hoskinson published an article saying that he did not like being called the co-founder of Ethereum.
“He doesn’t even want to mention Ethereum, he just calls it the E word”
Then, Charles Hoskinson started a new project. After a short break, he approached his former Ethereum colleague Jeremy Wood about a new project called IOHK (short for Input Output Hong Kong, where Hoskinson lived at the time) - a cryptocurrency and blockchain built for companies, government entities and academic institutions. Charles Hoskinson said that Cardano came about after IOHK customers proposed that developers build a Japanese version of Ethereum. At first, Cardano focused on the Japanese market and aimed to build something at the intersection of business, computing and compliance. Cardano has thus become a key project for IOHK - a public blockchain and smart contract platform that hosts the ADA cryptocurrency.
In addition, Hoskinson emphasized that Cardano is an improvement on first-generation platforms (such as Bitcoin) and second-generation blockchains (such as Ethereum). He called it a third-generation smart contract platform and cryptocurrency; compared with its competitors, it has undergone more rigorous research and testing, and is better than Ethereum in terms of security and scalability for companies, government entities and academic institutions.
In early 2017, with the help of the ICO boom, Cardano successfully raised $62 million. At that time, its market positioning was retirement investment and it was mainly sold to Japanese investors. It is understood that about 95% of the buyers at that time were Japanese.
Subsequently, the Cardano and ADA token ecosystem entered a slightly boring growth period. IOHK CTO Romain Pellerin recently summarized the past development milestones of the Cardano ecosystem :
2025.03 - ADA mentioned in the US Crypto Strategic Reserve;
2025.02 - On-chain constitution approved;
2025.01 Plomin - All decentralized governance operations have been activated;
2024.09 Chang - Decentralized governance and Plutus v3 (support for BLS to enable ZKP verification);
2023.02 Valentine - Interoperability with Bitcoin (ECDSA and Schnorr), dynamic P2P;
2022.09 Vasil - Data diffusion pipeline and Plutus v2;
2021.09 Alonzo - Plutus v1 smart contract;
2021.02 Mary - Tokens and NFTs;
2020.12 Allegra - metadata upgrade;
2020.07 Shelley - POS upgrade.
Perhaps because he was kicked out of Ethereum management, Hoskinson has always regarded Cardano as a competitor of Ethereum, and he is proud to adopt the POS mechanism before Ethereum: We are the first project to prove that POS can have the same security properties as Bitcoin. Although Vitalik responded later, it is not the first company to launch a proof-of-stake (PoS) network. In fact, POS has already happened in 2013. The goals of modern PoS protocols are much higher now, he said. Maybe the Cardano protocol Ouroboros will launch some form of PoS first, but this is not remarkable.
In November 2023, Vitalik discussed the Ethereum roadmap in an interview and proposed to redesign Ethereums staking system to solve the problem of centralization. During the discussion, he said that the UTxO approach might be adopted to solve the challenge. Crypto community members quickly pointed out that this solution is similar to the approach adopted by Cardano in its staking system. Subsequently, Charles Hoskinson published an article criticizing Vitalik Buterin for not acknowledging Cardano (ADA)s innovation in staking, and sarcastically said to him: Dont worry, Ethereum 3 will solve all problems. The filth between the two also triggered market discussions.
Hoskinson vs. Vitalik: Rivals who are like strangers
In an interview in Singapore in September 2024, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said that the Voltaire-era governance reforms of the Cardano ecosystem prevented the ecosystem from becoming a dictatorship like Ethereum and avoided the anarchy of Bitcoin.
Hoskinson said blockchains can choose to keep the protocol simple forever, like Bitcoin, or pick a king to run things. However, Cardanos new governance model solves the governance trilemma of efficiency, effectiveness, and integrity by distilling complex governance topics to vote through delegates and a membership-based organization called Intersect. When asked to explain his controversial remarks linking Ethereum to dictatorship, Hoskinson said that Ethereums whole vision began with Buterin, but will end with him.
In July 2024, when the US election was at a stalemate, Vitalik bluntly stated that he was opposed to making political votes based on whether or not to support cryptocurrency. Charles Hoskinson refuted this, saying: My primary goal has always been to keep the government as completely away from cryptocurrency as possible, but when this goal is impossible to achieve, the remaining options are very clear. If they continue to over-regulate, then we shouldnt vote for them... Voting for Biden is voting for the demise of the US cryptocurrency industry. For this reason, we should vote for candidates who support cryptocurrency. During last years TOKEN 2049 conference, he even said in an interview with CNBC: From the perspective of cryptocurrency, between Harris and Trump, Trump is undoubtedly the most popular candidate.
In terms of past experiences, values and even political inclinations, the two have a long history of grudges. Now, since Hoskinson has established a relationship with Trump, perhaps the direction of ADA and ETH will be completely different.
ADA’s TVL is only 5% of Solana’s, but its market capitalization has jumped to 8th place in cryptocurrencies
According to data from the DefiLlama website , despite the recent surge in the price of ADA (Cardano) tokens, its ecosystem TVL is still only US$460 million, the number of active addresses is only 70,681, and there are only 40 DeFi protocols on the chain; DeFi TVL is only equivalent to 5.75% of Solana and only 0.86% of Ethereum.
After the surge, TVL is still less than $500 million, less than a fraction of Ethereum
On the other hand, according to Coingecko data , the price of ADA is currently around US$0.97, with a market value of approximately US$35.14 billion, surpassing DOGE and following Solana, ranking 8th in the overall market value of cryptocurrencies.
It is no wonder that ABCDE co-founder BMAN said in a post : In Crypto, the price of the currency is the real product. From this perspective, XRP and ADAs products are really good.
Reference articles:
Cardano Past: The Soul of Hell Charles Hoskinson
Planet Frontline | Charles Hoskinson: Don’t call me the co-founder of Ethereum
